Читать книгу The Peacock Feather. A Romance онлайн

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Moreover, he could pipe. Wee Rob, the miller’s lame son, had first heard him, and had called to the other children. There had been a reconnoitring party down the lane. On tiptoe feet, breath suspended, eyes round with awe, they had gone. Through the bushes they had seen him at the cottage door, the pipe at his lips. And the music had been full of they knew not what of magic, joy and gladness. With parted lips and eyes full of childish wonder they had listened. Fear had vanished to the four winds of heaven, blown far far away by the sweet notes of the pipe.

And then Peter had stopped and moved. There had been the scuttling of little feet and the tapping of a crutch. But the tapping of the crutch had been reluctant in its retreat, for the magic of the piping lingered with Wee Rob.

By day, then, Peter wrote in his cottage, piped his tunes, or walked the moorland above the village. By night he slept and dreamt of the book he was writing, though often through his dreams he fancied he heard the sound of that pitiful sobbing.